Bulawayo Mission
Evy’s first meeting with her mother’s blood cousin Dr. Jakob van Buren had been affectionate. They not only had a van Buren connection, but as he’d said right off, “We’re eternally united in the family of God.”
Jakob did not disappoint her expectations. The big Dutchman had flowing silver hair that made her think of a horse’s flying mane when it was running free, enjoying liberty. He wore a typical long beard, Boer style, and he dressed almost always in dusty white, except for his Rhodesian-style hat, this one with a speckled feather stuck in its brim, and rugged Boer leather boots. His eyes, a faded blue, were small and sharp, but kindly eyes that welcomed her with genuine warmth when she’d arrived with Rogan.
Dr. Jakob had been carrying a photograph of Katie in his worn Bible, and he had shown it to her and Rogan at once.
“Well, there you are twenty-some odd years ago. You look just like her. Don’t you think so, Rogan?”
Rogan’s mouth tipped below his dark ribbon mustache, and his brown eyes glinted. “Not only is Mrs. Chantry the mirror image of Katie in appearance, Doctor, but she’s inherited Katie’s sprightly spirit.”
Evy felt her cheeks warm, but Dr. Jakob couldn’t know the content of Rogan’s words.
“Well, here she is, Doctor,” Rogan said cheerfully. “I’ve brought her here to you. And we’ve come by way of storms and swells to get her here too.” He looked at her with a disarming smile. “Haven’t we, Evy? And we’ve exciting news, as well. Evy is going to have a baby while she’s here.”
“A baby?” Dr. Jakob put his arm around her and hugged her with a pat on her head. “Well, bless our God. Isn’t that a celebration!”
“And a surprise,” Rogan said, folding his arms across his chest and smiling at her. “Nothing like a surprise to add spice to life. My son will be a Rhodesian.”
“Son?” chuckled Dr. Jakob. “What if I want a niece?” And he turned to Evy. “Well, I want to be an uncle. ‘Uncle Jakob’—that’s what you will call me.”
In the weeks that followed, Evy had gotten to know Jakob well. She’d had the privilege of aiding him in the medical ward just as she’d hoped and planned. Jakob had told her all about Katie, as much as he knew. “She had a heart as big as life,” he said. “Only thing was, she was not submissive to her God. Her strengths became her weaknesses, and her bright spirit and adventurous ways led to calamity. But she loved you, Evy. She fought for you. She would not give you up. And because she had a weak faith in God in a time of crisis, she didn’t turn to Him in her dilemma but relied on her own schemes. Not that her desires were wrong, but they needed to be directed by the purposes of God.”
Evy had heard a hundred tales about Katie, some humorous and warm, others showing her stubborn willfulness. In the end she knew she was more like her mother than she would have thought.
Perhaps Dr. Jakob had guessed the cracked and hurting relationship between her and Rogan because one Sunday morning his message titled “The Daughters of Sarah” fit her very well.
“Now Abraham failed to trust in the Lord during a famine, and he went down into Egypt. He was afraid of what would happen to him because Sarah was a beautiful woman. So he told his wife to say she was his sister. Now, Sarah could have refused. When the king saw Sarah and took her to add to his harem, she could have taken matters into her own hands, but she depended on the Lord to protect and deliver her, and He did. She called Abram her ‘lord’ and submitted to him. She submitted because she believed she was submitting to an even higher authority, God. And it was God and her trust in Him that delivered her.”
Evy drew her own conclusions as Dr. Jakob’s message went on. If she had truly been trusting in the Lord, she would not have needed to deceive Rogan about her pregnancy in order to come to Bulawayo. She would have told him the truth from the very start and depended on the Lord to bring to pass His purpose for her. If He had wanted her here now, He could have worked in Rogan’s heart. Instead, she had schemed, taken matters into her own hands, and so she had not only failed to trust God, but betrayed the trust between her and Rogan.
Yet confessing this to Rogan seemed the hardest thing that had ever stared her in the face. Somehow there was always a reason to delay, to try to pretend the anger would just go away and not leave a permanent stain. But the matter did not go away, and the longer it remained, the harder it was to deal with. So that it was easier to pretend all was right between them. And much of the time it appeared so.
Evy found she liked Dr. Jakob for his honesty, his selfless giving to the African tribesmen who came seeking his help. While Rogan was away, which became more frequent, she often talked long into the warm nights with Jakob, so that she felt she knew the van Burens in the Boer state of the Transvaal as well. She worried what would become of them in the war.
It was February, Rhodesia’s late summer, and the first bloom of dawn was already hot. A yellow stain bled into the paler blue sky above the sunburnt veld that yawned toward the ominous Matopos Hills.
An eerie silence cloaked Dr. Jakob van Buren’s Bulawayo Mission. A crocodile slipped with a whoosh down the bank into the dark waters, and some pelicans broke the stillness by flapping their wings and flying north. A monkey chattered uneasily and left its branches to disappear deeper into the still dark trees.
Evy Chantry awakened in the round, beehive-shaped hut with thick wheat-colored thatch, and for a moment she peered into the first light of dawn, listening. For the last two months she’d lived here with Rogan, though for much of that time he’d been coming and going, sometimes not showing up for several days at a time. Their marriage, thought Evy with grief, was teetering on the brink of disaster. Oh, Father God, how could something so wonderful have ended like this? Why did it happen?
Down deep in her heart she knew the answer. She had thought it necessary to deceive him because of her lack of trust in him to make the right decision. Wounded, Rogan could not, would not, forgive her. She’d had her reasons to keep the matter of her baby to herself. Her baby. Perhaps that idea had been part of the problem? Although she’d never even realized it, her emotions had settled on the idea that this baby was solely her responsibility; in keeping it secret, the baby had wrongly become hers, not ours.
At the time, her reasons to keep the news from him had made sense to her. If not right, at least she’d felt her reasons were justified. Rogan was controlling. He wouldn’t have let her come otherwise. She scowled. She was used to doing as she wanted. But Rogan insisted she had failed to trust in his character and leadership.
She sighed. Could they ever move beyond this? she wondered.
She remained in bed, listening. For what? She didn’t know. Everything had grown so still. That was it, so unusually still. For the two months she’d been here, each new day came alive with the riot of squawking birds, squealing monkeys, and the trumpeting of a small herd of elephants that came down to the river for their morning wallow. But this morning they’d all quite suddenly become silent.
She continued to listen, scarcely breathing. Her hand reached across the bed, but of course, it was empty. Rogan had left with Parnell and Derwent for the Great Zimbabwe Ruins. He’d said he’d return in two weeks. Three weeks had now come and gone, and there was no word.
Surely he would return soon. She missed him terribly, but a rush of hurtful memories also flooded her heart. The lack of forgiveness between them had become a wall as high and thick as any ancient ruin at Zimbabwe.
The low murmur of the Khami River came in through the bungalow window. She’d resisted open windows in the hut to the bitter end, but there’d been little choice about that, since all of Jakob’s bungalows were constructed this way due to the heat. For that matter, if anyone wanted to attack the mission station and burn it to the ground, a windowpane wouldn’t stop them. Nothing would, “Except God,” Dr. Jakob had interjected when they’d discussed the matter with Rogan. Rogan, too, had frowned about the open window.
“We are all here as secure as the will of our sovereign heavenly Father,” Jakob liked to say. Those words fitly spoken like apples of gold in settings of silver usually quieted everyone down, even Arcilla.
True, indeed. Evy quoted Psalm 34:7 aloud: “The angel of the LORD encamps all around those who fear Him, and delivers them.” She wasn’t thinking of attackers, but nasty bugs. She wasn’t as hysterical about them as Arcilla, but neither was she as stalwart as Darinda. The “itchy” insects were a ghastly horror. She frowned, feeling sorry for herself, and scratching her arm. It was time to get up. She wanted her hot sweet tea. Thank God for Mrs. Croft!
She tossed aside the thin coverlet and sat up. The windless morning grew lighter and hotter. Her head ached again. She was listless. She felt as though she weighed a ton. She reached her palms to her swollen belly and prayed for them both. Both of them? And her husband and father?
Rogan will return soon. No use being a dullard, Evy Chantry. You’re here in this condition, my dear, because it’s exactly what you wanted. So get up and be of some use around here.
The sunlight fell across the worn, bare, hand-planed table of heavy mukwa wood, where her hairbrush, hand mirror, and personal items were arranged. Her Bible was there too, still open to where she’d been reading last night through the Old Testament book of Joel: “The field is wasted, the land mourns.”
Rhodesia was undergoing a terrible drought, an increase in locusts, and a cattle disease. According to Dr. Jakob the indunas blamed it on the rule of the white man. The spirit gods of the Matopos were not happy.
Evy looked down cautiously before stepping onto the woven mat rug that covered the cow dung floor that had been polished into a smooth, rock hardness.
She walked to the window and looked out.
The clear light told her it must be nearing six o’clock. She breathed in the faint dawn breeze that whispered through the trees and tall grasses growing along the river’s bank. The whitewashed walls of the mission reflected the dull yellow glow of the brightening sunrise.
Evy smiled, certain she would never get used to living among lions, elephants, crocodiles, all manner of poisonous snakes and spiders. Rhodesia was a new world, and aside from her personal difficulties, she was quite happy to get to know her mother’s cousin, a dear saintly man who bade her call him “Uncle Jakob.” She was thrilled to do so, to be here, though she longed for Rogan’s return, and sometimes the hardships of the mission station made her sigh for the soft home comforts she’d taken for granted and left in Grimston Way.
Great birds, whose names she had yet to learn, circled and flew in shadows across the mellowing sky. It was the horizon that continued to hold her attention now. There was a dark casting look to it, like a strange cloud moving toward them. According to what Dr. Jakob told her yesterday, the rainy season was not due for some time yet. Could there be grass fires somewhere?
The door to Dr. Jakob’s bungalow opened, and he stepped out onto his stoep to begin what she knew would be his typical busy day. Evy watched him with a certain family pride. It seemed strange to know she even had a family member.
Jakob carried his scarred leather medical bag in one brown hand, while using the other to place a little pair of glass spectacles on his aristocratic nose. He stepped down to the swept earth to begin his tour of patients before the family-style breakfast in the common room, where they congregated for meals, fellowship, prayer, and Bible study.
Evy leaned out and smiled a welcome.
“Morning, Jakob,” she called cheerfully.
“You’re just the pretty face I want to see this morning. Mrs. Croft, that dear woman, is feeling her arthritis today. Can you come down to the medical ward and assist me before breakfast? Do you feel well enough?”
She sighed but smiled cheerfully to him. Any idea that she might feel listless would garner too much attention when others needed his time far more than she.
“I’ll be right over,” she called.
Evy let the reed curtain fall back into place and turned away from the window to hurry and dress.
The fashionable tight-fitting sleek skirts and bodices of London fashion were simply not practical here, not that she could wear them now anyway. She wore a simple light blue cotton top that hung wide and loose over a full skirt that reached just above the ankles. She was far from dressing in fashion, she thought wryly. Out here there were few European women, and they dressed as they pleased. Darinda wore riding habits, and the wives and daughters of the colonial farmers wore a hodge-podge of things they’d brought. Only Arcilla retained high fashion, and much of that was to her personal detriment. She was always tearing her fancy skirts or breaking a heel on her shoes, and then wailing about how long it took to get the new clothes she sent for from Capetown.
Evy found a clean pocketed apron that slipped over her head and tied it in the back. I almost look like a nurse, she thought, pleased. She brushed and braided her tawny, thick hair, then pinned the braids out of the way.
Some ten minutes later she came out of the hut to confront the hot morning.
Near the huts, the once eight-foot-tall poinsettia bushes, more like small trees, were dried up and dying. The bougainvillea were stunted and struggling to survive the drought.
Mrs. Croft came from what she called the scullery hut, bearing a mug of black tea. Despite what Jakob had said about her being a bit under the weather, Mrs. Croft looked as robust as always, tall and big-boned, her iron gray hair brushed back from her oblong face into a no-nonsense bun.
“Pah! You’ll not be going among the sick and dying without the bracing bit of English tea.”
Evy drank the tasty brew and placed the cup back on the small, round tray. “Is Alice up?”
“I’m bringing her some tea now. Alice is to lend me a hand in the garden. That corn’s shriveling up like a prune. We need to get it picked this morning. It never did grow well.” She shaded her eyes and looked up at the sun. “What we need the Lord to do is bring us some rain.”
“Not this time of year,” Evy said sadly, looking about at the sparse green. “According to Dr. Jakob there wasn’t any rain last year in the rainy season. The river is dangerously low.”
“Well, we’ve got to get down to the garden and start picking that corn before it’s so tough we can’t eat it. Never thought I’d see the day when Alice would join me in the standing corn! She was always too hoity-toity for muddying her hands. I’ll have to admit marriage to Derwent was a good thing for ’em both.”
It was true. There was a change in Alice. Evy had noticed it as soon as they met. The silly, mincing girl with her nose in the air of some years back had matured into a woman with three growing children, all of whom, a boy and two freckle-faced girls, were already reading the Bible and saying how “good and kind” Jesus was to them. How time and the challenges of life changed things! Evy thought.
Derwent’s influence on Alice and his children was commendable indeed.
“The good Lord knows what He’s about,” Mrs. Croft nodded again. “All those events we worried ourselves sick about are far behind us now.”
Yes, now we have new problems, Evy thought. Worse problems. Oh, Rogan …
Evy managed a paper smile. “So you think I did well to marry Rogan Chantry after all?”
Mrs. Croft sniffed. She shook out the dregs from the teacup and watched the dry dust rush to lick it up.
“He’s gone off and left you. And you far along too.” She eyed Evy’s waistline as though weighing and measuring the growing baby.
Evy kept smiling. She knew Mrs. Croft worried about her, and Rogan. Although Mrs. Croft wouldn’t admit it, she had a growing affection for Rogan and also worried about how he’d taken Evy’s “fib.” “I told you and told you, you should have let him know you was going to have a child.”
She said to Mrs. Croft, “It can also be said that Derwent has left Alice, too—and three children. Rogan’s due back any day.”
“So you say. He was supposed to be back from those ancient ruins in two weeks.”
Evy threw back her shoulders. “I’ll come down and help in the garden later too.” She turned and walked toward the medical ward, where the convalescents awaited attention.
“You come, but you’ll sit in the shade.”
Evy walked the path toward the ward, her limp hardly noticeable, but she weighed more now, being pregnant, and her back ached all the more. She sighed. I feel like I’m a hundred.
If she were fair with Rogan, she would admit that her success had a great deal to do with his faithfulness to her since their marriage back at Grimston Way. He had stayed beside her for months, working with her on the special exercises to strengthen her back and legs. It hadn’t been until he believed she was feeling well that he’d gone to Zimbabwe.
That gold Zimbabwean bird, she thought again. How intriguing. If she’d been able, she would have liked to go there herself and see the mysterious ruins. Was Sir Julien right? Was Zimbabwe the secret place that held Henry Chantry’s gold deposit? An ancient mine, perhaps?
Evy rubbed the small frown away from between her brows and walked on, determined not to allow Rogan’s absence to upset her. She must stay happy and in good health for their baby.
Dr. Jakob’s thirty-bed medical ward was ahead, shaded by trees. The patients, mostly Shona, were suffering from malaria. Their families had brought them here and stayed, living on the mission. The families all helped work the big garden and orchard to supply maize and other vegetables for both the mission and the Christian Shona.
The ward, the little chapel with its white cross, and the attendant buildings, all with sturdy thatch roofs, stood some distance from the private huts, while the rust-colored Matopos Hills gazed down sullenly on the compound.
The large vegetable gardens with sections of standing corn stretched down past “Jakob’s well” toward the low banks of the shrinking river. The growing but stunted corn stood with stalks and leaves curling in the morning heat.
Already some of the Christian Shona, considered part of “Jakob’s family,” were headed toward the field with primitive garden tools and buckets for sparse watering.
Below the corn, the red-brown earth was shaded by the dying leaves from pumpkins just beginning to show orange. The pumpkins were small. Nothing like the big round ones they grew in Grimston Way, where water was plentiful in the growing season.
Dr. Jakob had told her it was his godly ambition to make Bulawayo Mission eventually carry on in the same blessed fashion as Kuruman, which had prospered under that great and godly missionary Robert Moffat. “I want the Shona and Ndebele Christians working side by side. There must be plentiful gardens and fruit trees for all, each family working and providing for its own. No laziness, no free food, but godly discipline and thankfulness. We’ll feed hundreds of the African natives, we’ll teach them Christian hymns, and one day the Scriptures will be in their languages.”
Evy entered the medical ward and stopped in the open doorway until her eyes adjusted to the dimness. Dr. Jakob was busy treating the recuperating, but several patients were in a fevered daze.
Evy walked up to where he sat on a hollowed-out log bench. The Shona girl must have been around fifteen, but already she was mature in body. She was naked from the waist up, but Dr. Jakob showed no embarrassment or unease. He seemed used to the women, both Shona and Ndebele, who wore practically no clothes at all. They were all bare-breasted with only loincloths or thigh-length leather skirts, and bangles and beads.
At first she had been embarrassed by the near nakedness, and Mrs. Croft had been quite shocked when they first arrived. After months in Matabeleland and on the outskirts of Bulawayo, they had slowly adjusted to the sight. Nothing could be done about it. Only in the chapel during Bible reading and prayer did Dr. Jakob have her, Alice, and Mrs. Croft hand out “gowns.” These were mere square sections of cotton cloth with a hole cut in the center, which the women willingly slipped over their heads. Evidently, they thought it was a ritual of being a “Christian.” So far, Dr. Jakob said he had not gotten them far enough along in their knowledge to try to put Victorian fashion on them.
“We must not be so unwise as to make them think they are to become European. I believe that nakedness will fade with their grandchildren.”
Dr. Jakob was telling Evy, “The young girl from Chaka’s kraal has chills. Most likely the fever will peak before sundown.”
Evy nodded. The girl’s strong young body shook and trembled, and her eyes were rolled back. All Evy could see of them were tiny red veins in the whites of her eyes. Evy wrung a cloth in heated water and gently wiped the girl’s flawless ebony face and throat.
There was a new addition built onto the ward. It was called a godown. It was open-sided with walls that stood waist high. Upright poles supported a roof of thatch, and in summer, such as it was now, the wind could blow through. When the winter rainy season came, grass mats like rugs were let down to form walls.
The floor consisted of clay and cow dung, and Dr. Jakob made no attempt to separate the healthy members of the family who brought the ill to him. Both the well and sick stayed together in the ward, or camped out nearby.
Dr. Jakob’s medical “office” was adobe. Evy wondered that it only had only one small window. He had some shelves built from mopane wood, a table, a workbench, and his life’s work of journals and books.
The Shona girl lay sleeping on the mat. Her skin seemed hot, and her lips were cracked and bleeding, so Evy smeared some fat on them, mixed with dried mint or camphor.
“She must be burning up,” she commented in pity. “How long can she endure this high a temperature?”
“If it goes above one hundred four for very long, she’ll likely die. It’s happened before. They go delirious.”
Evy watched Dr. Jakob administer the quinine.
“This could help if it isn’t too late. The father didn’t bring her in until last night. She was already far gone.”
From outside there came a babble of excited voices. Evy glanced toward the opening where the sunshine came in.
“Cover her up with the kaross, Evy. When she starts to sweat, that will be a good sign.”
Jakob stood and walked to look out the opening.
Evy did as Jakob bid her, taking the jackal furs and tucking them around the girl’s body.
“A surprising call,” Jakob stated. “Trouble, I fear.”
Evy looked over her shoulder at him, wondering. The very word trouble caused her nerves to tighten. The unusual sights, odors, and customs of Bulawayo at times still left her jumpy and sometimes insecure. Again she wished Rogan were present.
Quarreling voices outside in the yard could be heard.
“What kind of trouble?” she asked quietly.
“We shall see.” He slipped into his dusty white jacket, put his hat back on, and turned to go outdoors.
Evy came to him, her hand on his arm, detaining him.
Her eyes searched his for meaning, but he patted her hand calmly, and a brief smile touched the corners of his tan, lined face.
“It is the induna, Shaka. Most likely he’s come about the girl from his kraal. They do not all approve of their people coming to me. I shall see what he wants. Most likely he’s come to register his complaints to me. They think I can stop the chief native commissioner from his decisions.”
Sir Julien was the commissioner.
Evy was not convinced the old induna was harmless. Even before Rogan and Derwent left, Rogan had told her the indunas were against Rhodes and the Charter Company.
Dr. Jakob went out to meet the induna, while Evy remained in the open doorway looking on.